Social Rewards

Social Rewards operates as a B2B platform that enables companies to create loyalty programs centered around social media engagement. Founded in March 2010 by Joseph Morin and Mike Uesugi, who brought over 25 years of combined digital industry experience, the company was established to merge social media, affiliate marketing, and loyalty rewards. The initial idea, conceived in September 2009, was to create a tracking platform that allowed individuals to become affiliates using only their social media accounts, which evolved into a points-based loyalty system.

The company's business model revolves around providing a platform for brands to identify and reward their customers for social media activities. This includes actions like brand mentions on Twitter, Foursquare check-ins, Facebook 'Likes,' and YouTube engagement. Customers accumulate points for these interactions, which can then be redeemed for tangible goods and services such as hotel stays, show tickets, or merchandise. Social Rewards offers its clients a robust analytics dashboard to track the return on investment from these social media activities, monitoring metrics like brand mentions, click-throughs, shares, and sales conversions. The platform is designed to either integrate with a brand's existing loyalty program or function as a standalone system.

Initially self-funded with $250,000 from its founders, Social Rewards secured $600,000 in an oversubscribed angel funding round in February 2012, with significant participation from members of Tech Coast Angels. This funding facilitated the platform's development from its alpha version through to a more scalable version 2.0. The company initially targeted the tourism, travel, and hospitality industries, achieving an 80% market share of hotel casinos on the Las Vegas Strip with early clients like Tropicana Las Vegas, The Venetian, The Palazzo, and Caesars Entertainment. Following this success, the company planned to expand into the entertainment and consumer product sectors.

Keywords: loyalty marketing, social media rewards, customer engagement platform, brand advocacy, social CRM, points-based loyalty, affiliate marketing, customer retention, hospitality loyalty, entertainment marketing, social analytics, ROI tracking, consumer rewards, fan engagement, digital marketing, B2B SaaS, customer loyalty solution, brand loyalty, social media marketing, rewards platform